What’s happened so far?

• EMS from Hamilton was employed to help Council develop a new District Plan (Craig Sharman and Murray Kivell).
  
  
• We held intensive workshops with Council planners and other staff to identify the issues that we know the new plan needs to tackle.  We also identified which parts of the existing District Plan works well and which don’t.  The intention is to only ‘fix what is broken’.
  
  
• From these discussions six main issues were identified, namely:
  
  
  1. The enhancement and consolidation of the district’s urban areas;
  2. Enhancing the economic performance of the district, including managing key industrial sites and corridors;
  3. Identification of significant landscapes and natural areas in the district and consideration of how they are to be protected and managed;
  4. Values of significance to iwi and consideration of how these are managed;
  5. Climate change, potential for new renewable energy generation, and energy use;
  6. Water quality and rural land use intensification.
     
     
• Council has hired the Isthmus Group and Wildland Consultants to report respectively on what landscapes in the South Waikato are outstanding, and where the most significant natural areas are.  Work on both of these projects has already started.
• We are engaged in discussions with adjoining Councils to identify opportunities to work together across the region.
• We have begun meeting with local stakeholders to identify their concerns and hear their views on what the new District Plan should contain and do.